


Darling, Without You

by ShinyMelcatty



Category: Wreck-It Ralph (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 02:11:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19879885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShinyMelcatty/pseuds/ShinyMelcatty
Summary: It is 2016, four years after Sugar Rush's false king was dethroned and killed. The king's "court jester" was unmasked and arrested, sentenced to imprisonment in her original game, Fix-it Felix Jr., where her cousin still filled the role of "Good Guy." Make-it Mavis lived a life of desperation, of valuing survival over compassion, of taking everything rather than having nothing. But after Hero's Duty is unplugged, and Felix loses his wife, Mavis finds herself no longer alone in grieving a loved one, and she is unsure whether this fact is comforting or suffocating.





	Darling, Without You

Hero’s Duty was unplugged.

That was the long and short of it. That was all anyone really needed to know. Its great, golden prongs backed out of Game Central Station without much warning at all, and left a hollow, cold tunnel that didn’t even catch the light that poured in from the arcade doors. Many were calling it a tragedy. Others, mostly the more seasoned sprites among them, showed a passing sympathy, but couldn’t be bothered for much more than that. In the thirty-four years that the arcade had been open, too many games had come and gone to bother being heartbroken over every loss. Such things happened. It was that way since the beginning, and would be that way until the arcade was no more. That was life.

That was the long and short.

Rather, that was what _could_ have been the long and short, if not for one particularly beloved hero that faded away into the dark.

She was a difficult woman, to say the least – intimidating, intense, tough as nails, not exactly friendly, but all the same, she was loved. Being one of the four sprites who achieved real hero status in the Sugar Rush invasion of 2012, she was admired. Idolized. An inspiration.

Sergeant Calhoun.

_Tamora_ Calhoun.

Tammy.

Hard-ass.

Captain Buzzkill.

_Cousin-in-law._

_Cousin-in-law. Cousin-in-law._ The phrase nagged at Mavis’ head like tiny birds pecking away. Once Calhoun married Felix, she became her cousin-in-law, a title that Mavis turned up her nose at. She never wanted Calhoun to be her anything. She would have been perfectly happy never seeing her again after the first day she laid eyes on her. Sure, the Sugar Rush infestation was not _technically_ her fault. But if Hero’s Duty never existed, then, chances were, Make-it Mavis would still be Pyrite. She would still have a circus full of performers and animals and firecrackers. She would still have an audience full of her favorite kids, smiling and laughing and cheering her name. She would still have the life she fought so hard to have. She would still live in the one place she ever truly considered home. And she would still have a best friend.

She would still have the one sprite she ever really loved.

Just one look at Calhoun, and Mavis would remember all-too-clearly the day that her life fell into the grinding jaws of a thousand metal monsters. But…

_Cousin-in-law._

Technically, and legally… _family._

Mavis would not have it. It took her long enough to even want her _actual_ cousin to be her family. She could admit to herself that Calhoun’s absence was impossible to ignore. She wished that she were still around, if only so that everyone could stop being miserable and blubbery. But the idea that she should have felt sad, _legitimately_ sad for losing her? She wasn’t about to go crying over some dead broad she never liked in the first place, just because of some stupid wedding.

All the room for grief in her heart was permanently occupied.

Said heart thudded heavily and bluntly in her chest as she sat atop Niceland, dangling her feet over the edge, her arms draped over her guitar, like every night. She gazed longingly through Fix-it Felix Jr.’s screen, across the arcade, at the pink, flashing, glittery eyesore over by the Whack-a-Mole. _Sugar Rush._ Home-sweet-home. There was a perfect view of it from the top of Niceland, which was both a blessing and a curse. It was unlikely that she would ever be allowed to set foot in her home again, and seeing it so close was just a visual reminder. But at least she could see it at all. Every night, during her designated, agreed-upon alone time, she could sit on the roof and try to soak up rays of its lights, or hear notes of its theme music. The good memories could come flooding back, and she could get by on that age-old coping strategy of hers:

Pretending.

At the very least, she could pretend _he_ was with her again.

Once the rest of the game had long since gone to bed, she could ease herself into the feeling that she and her partner of thirty years finally had a moment alone. Downtime. Some peace and quiet, something she never truly learned the value of until she had to keep up appearances and pretend not to be as close to “the king” as she was. But away from prying eyes and big ears, behind closed doors, they could just… be themselves. Together. They could just _talk._

Unfortunately, he stopped being talkative once he died.

She was never dumb enough to try believing he could reply. But maybe, just maybe, he could hear her anyways.

So, like every night, she began plucking a gentle melody on her guitar, and offered up a soft serenade to the stars.

_“I’m trying to hold my breath_

_Let it stay this way_

_Can’t let this moment end…”_

She closed her eyes in defiance of the utterly _wrong_ world around her. Sugar Rush was so rarely dark, but maybe if she concentrated just right, she could believe the faint light coming from the arcade and glowing through her eyelids was just an elusive sunset, the sort that painted the horizon into an orange creamsicle.

Yes, she thought, as she felt her heart pick up. The sun would set soon, and Sugar Rush would fall into nighttime, a strange phenomena that came entirely too infrequently. Whether it was a glitch, or even an _Easter Egg,_ she did not care to ask. All that mattered was that those nights were special.

_“You set off a dream in me_

_Getting louder, now_

_Can you hear it echoing?”_

The ledge she sat on was no longer the roof of Niceland. She was at the candy castle, perched on the balcony outside the royal chambers. Behind her, the ornate, windowed doors were cracked open just a bit.

_“Take my hand_

_Will you share this with me?”_

He was inside. He was listening.

_“‘Cause darling, without you…”_

_Creak._

The sound grabbed Mavis by the heart and slammed her right back into the frigid ice water that was reality. Barely containing a furious scream, she whipped her head around at the culprit.

It was Felix.

_Of course_ it was.

Or, rather, the weird, off-kilter husk shaped like him that had been shambling around the arcade. He looked, acted, and felt like a lethal chunk of his code had been sucked right out of his body ever since Hero’s Duty went down the tubes.

Since he lost his wife, anyway.

Mavis could not blame him for being… strange. Not at all. Even she could not be so bitter. But she hoped so sincerely that he would be strange somewhere far away from her. She wanted no part of his mourning process. She had enough mourning to do on her own, mourning for a sprite she loved for nearly _thirty years,_ not _four,_ and whose death was not an act of Litwak, but indirectly caused by said wife’s game. Mavis believed she could only be so sympathetic. There was only so much support she could offer him, and it was not nearly enough.

She was useless to help, and she knew it. It would have been easier for the both of them if they just kept their distance from each other for a while.

Yet, here he was. Intruding on her alone time.

He looked even less like himself than he already had in the past few weeks – no hat, no uniform, no hammer. Just unkempt, unwashed hair, a wrinkled white undershirt, pajama bottoms, and dirty socks. An absolute mess. For him, anyway.

He looked at her, not even trying to smile. He said quietly, his voice ragged, “Mavy. Hi.”

Mavis felt her face heat up. She had no idea what to do or say, and she hated that. Looking away from him to study her guitar strings, she said coldly, “Do you know what ‘alone time’ means?”

“I do,” he said. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep.”

She plucked a single note, and said a bit more gently, “Well… I’m not surprised. But why come up here?”

His voice came a bit closer. “I was thinkin’ about you.”

Her heart stuttered.

“… _Why?”_

“Because–” his voice cracked a bit, and he took some steadying breaths. “Because I need to ask you something.”

Mavis braced herself for the nasty feeling of having no answer, but otherwise, said nothing. After a long, uncomfortable pause, Felix went ahead and blurted it out, a little bit louder than she was expecting.

“Why haven’t you been here for me?”

Every muscle in her body tensed. It took all of her willpower not to just fly away and ditch the emotionally draining conversation before it could start. She hesitated, waiting and hoping for some suitable answer to just float into her head, one that would dissipate the situation.

Nothing came to her.

He continued, not a trace of anger in his voice, but heaps of pain, “I need you. I need my family. You _know_ that. And I know– I know you know what this feels like. Knowing that, how can you just leave me alone with this?”

“You’re not alone,” she interjected lowly. “The whole arcade is here for you.”

“But I want _you,_ ” he insisted. “I want my cousin. But you act like you don’t– like you don’t even _care._ ”

Her shoulders fell heavy. “You know that’s not true.”

“Do I, Mavis? Do I, really? What have you done to show me that? Why don’t I matter enough for you to actually try to show me you care? Do I matter to you _at all?”_

It was so unlike him to be so riled up, so accusatory. But Mavis knew all too well how grief could turn one into a different sprite.

She scanned the ground far beneath her feet for anything to busy her eyes with. “Sure. But it’s the things I _don’t_ do.”

His voice hardened, crackling with upset. “Really. You know what you’re _not_ doing? You’re not even looking at me. You haven’t been talking to me. You’ve barely been in the same room as me for over a week! How is that showing me you care? I mean, c’mon,” a humorless, pleading laugh jumped in his throat, “you’d rather sit on a roof alone than be there for your family!? Why!?”

Her defense mechanism snapped to attention, and she shot a razor-sharp glare at him.

“I don’t know! Maybe I’ve been some kind of quote unquote _‘villain’_ for fifteen years and now I’m some cold, unfeeling monster,” she lied. “Maybe I have my own crap to deal with! Gimme a break, huh?!”

She instantly regretted looking at him. There had been so much pain in his eyes lately, too much for her to stand looking at, and she had just added a grand old slap in the face to it. His exceptionally blue eyes were all pink and red-rimmed, but clearly bone dry. He really had been up all night, and he had probably been crying for most of it.

Perhaps the worst of all was what Mavis finally saw dangling from his neck on a chain that was way too long for him.

Dog tags. _Her_ dog tags.

The sight struck a deep, painful chord in her. It seemed barely different from what she herself had done the first time the sprite she loved had been torn from her life, all those years ago. She had found the last bit of his world left to hold in her hands, and kept it with her, so that maybe she could carry even a near meaningless fraction of him with her wherever she went. A part of her always felt a bit stupid for it, but she just couldn’t let it go. Even the thought of it brought a lonely chill to her heart.

It had been nearly thirty years since they came into her possession, and even still, they hung around her neck as she sat on that rooftop. That tattered, distressed scrap of a red scarf, and those permanently smudged racing goggles, the leather cracked and blistered. They were probably garbage, but it hardly mattered. They belonged to him, once upon a time. So a part of him still belonged to her.

She knew too well the sort of pain that would lead a sprite to keep something like that. Seeing those dog tags around Felix’s neck, there was a pang of guilt deep in her stomach. Sure, he had loved Calhoun for four years, and not thirty. But Mavis had only known the sprite she loved for four years when she lost him for the first time, and that pain nearly destroyed her.

And through all that, who had been there for her, even when no sane sprite would have been?

Felix.

_Of course,_ Felix.

Before she thought to speak, his eyes fell, and she could practically hear his heart crumpling. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, turning away to trudge back to the door. “I’ll stop bothering you.”

“Wait,” she called back. The door did not creak.

Clenching her jaw, squeezing the neck of her guitar, staring into the forest stretching into darkness below, she sighed. “It’s okay. Come sit.”

A hesitant moment passed, but out of the corner of her eye, she soon saw her cousin’s shape sit a safe distance from her, the same as any reasonable sprite would. It was only fair that they be cautious – she had an impressive record of morally reprehensible acts, even some that put blood on her hands. For all her jokes and threats, Mavis had no intention of causing real harm again without suitable cause in her eyes. She never really did kill without necessity. But to the more fearful sprites among the arcade, she was just a hair away from snapping necks left and right. An understandable assumption, she thought.

But that was not why Felix kept his distance, and she knew that. He was just respecting her space, something he was particularly unskilled at back in the 80’s. At that, she felt a twinge of appreciation. He really had grown up since she had been gone.

The two sat in silence for a little while, Mavis idly tuning her guitar that was already in tune. After some deliberation, confusion, and frustration, she spoke up.

“So… what are you looking to get out of me right now? Do you want comfort or do you want advice? Because, honestly, I’m hardly qualified to give either. You know I’m not great with feelings and all that mess, and if you’ll think back to ‘87, you might remember I’m not an expert at what anyone would call ‘healthy coping.’”

Felix did not answer. Mavis got the impression that he actually did not know what he wanted.

“I mean…” she shrugged. “I guess you could just… _vent._ You know, just… talk to me.”

He was silent for some time again, but he eventually took up the offer. In a voice so small, cracked, and fragile that it seemed it might fall apart, he began to speak.

“I feel like… I’m losing my mind. I can’t do anything. I can’t do _anything,_ because all I can do is think about her. She’s… everywhere I look. Everything reminds me of her. I can’t even sleep in our bed anymore. Without her, it’s just so… I just wake up again and again, expecting her to be there when I roll over, but she’s… not. Honestly, no matter what I try, I can’t sleep at all. I just lie there thinking about her. And then, even when I do fall asleep, I just dream about her, and… and when I wake up and remember that she’s _gone,_ I just…”

His voice began to quake, but, somehow, he was not crying. Part of Mavis wondered if he had used up all his tears for the night already. She glanced at him, and found him hugging his arms close and rocking the tiniest bit, eyes looking somewhere far away.

“I’m just… _hit_ with the fact that… she’s gone. I’ll never wake up next to her again. I’ll never hold her hand again. I’ll never see her smile, I’ll never– never hear her voice, or make her laugh, or– or kiss her– I’ll never _kiss her_ again, oh– oh _Devs…_ ”

He was quiet for a while, with his face buried in his palm. Mavis had no response. She was lost on what to say, if anything at all. Truth be told, his words were hitting far too close to home, and part of her was regretting asking him to speak. It all just felt like dustings of salt in wounds that never healed. All the same, she took her pain in silence and listened.

“How…” he continued, slow and uncertain, “how do I carry on like this? How can I ever move on without her, after knowing how beautiful my life was with her? How can I just… let things go back to the way they used to be, and… be okay? I feel like… I love my game, I love my friends, I know I do, but I… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… it’s not _enough._ It’s not. I go through my whole day, and when it’s over, I just think… How was this _ever_ good enough for me before? Can you believe that? Isn’t that… isn’t that awful of me?”

Finally, Mavis felt she had something to say. After a few moments’ thought, she replied in a soft, awkward, but sincere melancholy.

“Well…” she muttered, “Yeah. It is. But all this… this was never gonna make you feel anything good. You’re gonna think, feel, and probably do stuff you would never do otherwise. But that’s the way it goes. You gotta just deal with that and… let yourself be awful, a bit. ‘Cause it’s gonna happen, no matter what you do. That’s just part of hurting.”

“I don’t…” he shook his head a bit out of the corner of her eye. “I don’t want to be like this.”

“Hmm,” she hummed in short, begrudging agreement. “Yeah. I didn’t want to be either.”

Mavis waited, giving him a chance to elaborate. When he remained silent, she continued carefully, “And… look. You probably don’t want to hear this, but… things will never be the same again. Not really. You can’t just shake something like this. It’s been–” she swallowed, plucking a single string in quiet anxiety, “…it’s been four years… since I lost him for good. And I… I still see him everywhere. He still keeps me awake at night. Even when I’m not thinking about him, I’m… still, somehow, thinking about him. Like I expect to just run into him while I’m out and about. The stupidest part of my heart says, ‘Hey, he came back once before, so who’s to say he won’t now?’ But I know he won’t. I _saw_ what happened to him. And the life I had before that… it’s gone. It’s gone for good.”

After a pause, she heard Felix breathe weakly, “Mavy…”

“But,” she interrupted, hauling herself back on track. “Y’know… things change. Your life won’t be what it was before, but what’s normal will change. Eventually, you learn to live with it, in whatever way you can. The pain never really does go away. It never will. But it changes too. So… it’s fresh now. For you. But it won’t always be this hard. Not in the same way. I think. I don’t know. I’m still… figuring all this out.”

Another silence fell, the air thick with heavy thoughts. Mavis was not sure how much of her words she fully believed. The grief still hurt almost too much to bear, but when she thought back to the time that it was fresh, open and weeping, the difference was clear. The healing process was slow, far too slow, and she was not sure where she would end up another four years later. She was not sure where she even hoped to end up. There was no future that she could sincerely long for without him in it. Maybe it would have been enough to just feel okay again.

She just could not imagine ever getting to a point where she would feel any less homesick.

Felix spoke again, quiet and pleading. “But… what do I do _now,_ Mavy?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “…I don’t know. I don’t think I’m someone you’d wanna be asking that sort of thing. I mean… back when I was in your shoes, you sure had a lot of advice to give. Let others help you. Don’t try to take it on alone. All that stuff. Just take your own advice, I guess. It’s probably a lot better than mine.”

“Mavy…” he said a bit more insistently, “my own advice isn’t helping. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“You don’t wanna ask me for advice.”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I do. I want to know… What helps you?”

She scoffed.

He read it clearly, and added, “What _actually_ helps you. I don’t mean all the self-destructive behaviors. None of that ever really helped you. Mavy, how… How do you really get by?”

Mavis dug as deep as she could, scrounging for anything to tell him. Her mind traveled back in time, back to one of the lowest points of her life. 1987. The Roadblasters incident. She just barely made it out of that alive, but when all was said and done, and she really had to be there for herself…

“I bet there’s so much you wish you could tell her. Things you wish you’d said.”

Felix paused, but agreed quietly. “Yes.”

“Even though,” she gave a single chuckle through her nose, “even though you told her you loved her every five minutes.”

“Yes,” he said sadly. “But I just couldn’t say it enough. I’d say it every minute if she were here now. I’d say so many things.”

“Well…” Mavis took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Then say them.”

“…What?”

“Talk to her. She won’t talk back, but talk anyway. Get it out. Everything. Even if it doesn’t matter, like, if it’s just about what you did that day. Even if it’s ugly stuff. Just find a way to say it. That helped me.”

She saw him leaning her way just a bit. “It… _did?_ ”

She closed her eyes, preparing to open up what she otherwise would have kept under lock and key. There seemed little point in keeping it a secret from him anymore.

Her voice fell. “Back in ‘87… when I lost him for the first time, I… wrote to him. I wrote him letters. Every day, if I could stand to. Sometimes, it hurt too much. But, weirdly enough, it… just helped. I can’t say why, but it did.”

“…Wow…” Felix breathed. “That’s… so… so _healthy._ Mavy, I’m proud of you.”

Mavis frowned. “Don’t make it weird.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, and after pausing briefly he said, “so… it helped you back then, you said. What about now?”

“Hm?”

“Have you… been writing to him, still? Or… or talking?”

Mavis’ bones suddenly felt too heavy for her body. She traced her fingers over the designs scratched across the surface of her guitar and gazed out at Sugar Rush again, unable to bear just how much she missed him in that moment.

She answered softly, unable to keep the pain from her voice, “Who do you think I sing to every night?”

There was a distinct feeling of clarity that she could feel emanating from her cousin, a strange sort of heartbroken awe. “I…” he breathed, seemingly at a loss, before clearing his throat. “Mavy, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I never would have interrupted you if I’d known how important this was to you.”

She shrugged. “It’s fine.”

“No, I…” he stood, and she looked over to see his eyes downcast and regretful. “I’ll leave you to it. Thank you for talking with me, Mavy. I think I’ll try again to get some sleep.”

He began to walk away, but before she even realized she had spoken, Mavis called to him sharply.

“ _Wait._ Don’t go.”

Felix looked back at her, eyes full of questioning disbelief. Mavis felt her face redden as she stepped into strange territory for her.

“Stay. It’s fine. Come sit down,” she gestured to a spot on the ledge, a fair bit closer than he had been sitting before. “I’ve… got some stuff I need to say.”

Hesitantly, as if he might have frightened her off if he moved too quickly, Felix approached again and sat, watching her, clearly concerned. She supposed that he was never really sure what she was going to say, especially… in moments where it seemed like she was going to say something nice. She could hardly blame him for that. But this time, she was going to try.

“Felix…” she sighed.

“…Mavy?”

“You were there for me in ‘87. Through everything. I… should’ve been here for you now.”

“Oh,” he squirmed slightly. “It’s… okay.”

“No,” she insisted. “It’s not. I do know what you’re going through. I know how much it hurts. And I know… how badly you need help. I’m not… exactly sweet or kind or nurturing. But we’re thirty-four in gamer years, now, not _five._ I learned a lot about myself in Sugar Rush. I learned how to… have a family. A found family. With _him,_ and with all those kids. That’s… that’s all gone away now, and… I guess it’s hard to want a family that _isn’t_ that. If that makes sense.”

He frowned and looked at the world below. “…It does.”

“But the thing is, well…” her mind drifted far back to the time of the Roadblasters incident, to something Felix said when he thought she was asleep. A sentiment she had always shared.

“I don’t know how to be the family you need.”

His eyes snapped back to her, a look in his eye like he knew he had heard that before, but could not quite recall.

She continued, trying her best not to look away or give up, “I never have. But… my whole world is gone. You’re… the only family I have left now. I want to try to do this right, or at least do it better. It’s hard, it’s really hard, but I’m… still learning.”

Felix’s eyes filled with too much sincerity for her to handle. Her gaze dropped to those dog tags again, the light of the arcade casting shiny outlines over the grooves that read _‘Sgt. Tamora Calhoun.’_ Mavis lifted her hand to her neck, worrying her partner’s scarf between her fingers, as she so often did.

“I should have been there for you,” she confessed. “I’m sorry.”

For some time, they were both silent, merely listening to the distant themes and jingles playing from the other arcade cabinets. Mavis felt far too exposed, and the silence was only making it worse. Even so, she sort of dreaded what he might say, and was not too eager to look at his face again.

She did anyways.

He was just staring, mouth agape, looking like he could cry. In a different way than he already looked the whole time, anyway. Mavis felt herself shrink. Her insides told her that she had said her piece, and that she was valid to clear out of there already. But she still had to finish her song, after all.

“M-Mavy, that…” Felix whispered, shaking his head slightly. “That… was the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me. I mean… _ever._ ”

Her face grew way too hot, and she scoffed as she turned her eyes back to Sugar Rush. “Yeah, well. Lookin’ out for a bunch of kids for fifteen years can turn you soft.”

A short, incredulous, adoring chuckle drifted from Felix. “Wow. Thirty-four years and you still surprise me.”

There was a brief, pregnant pause, and Mavis could hear her heart thumping in her ears. She knew it was coming. Sure enough, she saw him scoot the tiniest bit closer, and he said it softly.

“I love you, Mavy.”

Her grip on her guitar tightened. Saying it back would have been the right thing to do. The family thing to do. But that deep-seeded, lifelong fear that had so devastatingly come true four years prior closed up her throat. She did not have the best track record for loving things and not losing them. And she could not bear to lose the last sprite in the world that she gave a single crit about.

So, rather than giving a real answer, she ran her nails slowly down her guitar strings, and breathed, “Yeah.”

Felix gave a single sad, but affectionate chuckle. “Not there yet, huh? That’s okay. You don’t need to say it.”

“…Thanks.”

A silence settled between them for some time, and Mavis could not decide if it was awkward or not. She could feel Felix thinking, could sense a question nagging at him, maybe one he could not decide if he should ask. It got on her nerves pretty quick.

“Out with it,” she prompted him.

He jumped a bit. “Oh,” he looked at his hands, “Well… I mean… If you don’t mind me asking, did he… I mean, did he ever tell you that he… I mean he _did,_ didn’t he? Did he… _say_ it?”

Mavis was certain she knew what he meant, but clarified anyway. “…That he loved me?”

Felix swallowed. “Yeah.”

Her heart squirmed and twisted as she watched the lights of Sugar Rush flash and dazzle. Memories resurfaced. Good ones. The best ones. And they hurt in the most precious, beautiful, agonizing way. Still, a smile crept carefully onto her lips, and she gave a sigh through her nose that could have passed for a laugh.

“He did,” she told him. “A lot, actually.”

“Huh. Wow.” Felix muttered, “Surprising guy.”

Mavis glanced over, easily reading her cousin’s mind. “You’re wondering if I ever said it back.”

He looked really quite embarrassed, but nodded. “Did you?”

“Of course.”

“Golly…”

“Yeah,” she sighed, feeling that pain digging deeper and deeper. She looked up to the stars, the ones she was so captivated by in her early years. “…But it took us so long. We… we loved each other for so long before we actually started saying so. If I could go back and do it again…” her chest tightened, “…I’d have said it so much sooner. I look back and I just see so many days we wasted pretending it wasn’t there. So many days that I should have told him. Honestly… every day. Every damn day.”

“Mavy…” Felix whispered, “I’m sorry. I understand.”

She hummed begrudgingly. “No. You were smart. You told her all the time.”

“I just…” he stuttered, “I just… wish I’d done it more, too.”

Mavis could have let her bitterness take the wheel and argue, but she stamped it down. There was no room for it in her heavy heart. It was time to finish her song. She had left him waiting long enough.

“It’s okay, though. I can make up for it with _this,_ ” she said, patting her guitar before positioning her fingers over the strings. “I can keep a stupid promise I made… and I can make up for all the times I didn’t tell him. All the chances to say it that… I didn’t take. And for–”

Her words stopped dead. It was too much. Her throat seized up, her body quivered, and her eyes stung. Felix did not ask if she was alright, but she could feel him looking. She heard him begin to sniff. Finally, Mavis’ lungs pulled in a sharp breath of their own accord, and she broke into tears. The pain burst out and spilled over like lava.

Voice quaking, she finished her thought. “And for all the chances I’ll– I’ll never get again.”

At that, Felix crumbled into whimpering sobs next to her. There seemed very little she could do for him, but she could not keep her song inside any longer. Mustering up all the composure she could, she played herself back into where she left off, and sang in a voice cracked and broken with grief.

_“‘Cause darling, without you…”_

Felix sucked his teeth hard. “ _Ngh– oh–_ ” he coughed, shaking his head. “Mavy–”

Somewhere deep inside, she found another ounce of strength to push into her voice.

_“All the shine of a thousand spotlights_

__

__

All the stars we steal from the night sky

Will never be enough

_Never be enough,”_

Every note seemed to carve deeper into her poor cousin, but he listened all the same, his face pushed into his palm, his back slouching dangerously over the edge. He must have found plenty more tears to cry in the time that he had been up there. It may have been breaking his heart, but Mavis fully believed that if he knew the words, he would have been singing along with her, singing to his wife.

Mavis, despite her better efforts, would not have blamed him for it.

_“Towers of gold are still too little_

__

__

These hands could hold the world, but it’ll

_Never be enough…”_

Tears streamed down Mavis’ face as she sang with what little might she could muster. This was supposed to be her designated, agreed-upon time to mourn, and that was something she chose to do alone. Having Felix there was not something she would be keen to repeat, but for one night, it was okay. They may not have been mourning the same sprite, but they could still mourn together. Just for one night.

Their circumstances may have been different, but once their walls really began to break down, it seemed as if their pain bled together into one color. Grief was grief. Mavis lost the love of her life, and so did Felix.

That was the long and short of it.

_“Never be enough for me…”_

**Author's Note:**

> Written in November 2018. Song referenced is "Never Enough" from The Greatest Showman.


End file.
